Monday, June 29, 2009

Thought of the Day

[President] Obama has essentially endorsed the detention policies of George Bush without the courtesy of apologizing for slandering him over the last two and a half years. Obama and his allies screeched endlessly about indefinite detentions, and not just in Gitmo, either. They specifically railed against the holding of terrorists without access to civil courts in military detention facilities around the world, specifically Bagram, but in general as well. Not even six months into his term of office, Obama realized that Bush had it right all along.

Straying From Your Area of Expertise

Noble Laureate in Physics William Shockley, who taught at my school, was pounded by the liberals 35 years ago for making the mistake of noticing that blacks did worse than whites on the Stanford-Binet IQ tests. The kindest words I heard about him back then were from my Greek professor, who quoted Plato about guys who know one thing well not necessarily knowing all things even cursorily (loose translation and a memory misty with time).

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Notice that Dr. Krugman uses the plural when he says "ice caps are shrinking". This is just not true. There has been a decrease in the Northern sea ice over the thirty years we have been able to see all the arctic ice cap, but in the south, the sea ice has been increasing in area and extent. Even if Krugman was comparing the apples to oranges of sea ice in the north to the ice fields on Antarctica in the south, which ice fields have also been increasing over the past 30 years, except in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is 2% of the area of Antarctica, he's still wrong. And he's unclear, but the next paragraph is much worse.

It is more difficult to talk about the changing M.I.T. predictions as he does not identify them nor even say if the degree change is Fahrenheit or Centigrade. Sloppy. And wrong. If it is the M.I.T. study I'm thinking about, it is another pre-rigged computer simulation. Next to worthless. It is just as wrong to say that the CO2 is increasing at an unprecedented, high rate. Here's the Mauna Loa graph:That is about the gentlest acceleration curves I have ever seen. Let's look at the same graph with a Y axis that goes all the way to zero. It looks a little less alarming on that scale, which is why you rarely see it represented that way.

But those errors and falsehoods are not the real reason Krugman is so wrong. He apparently doesn't know the basics. First off, CO2 is not the biggest greenhouse gas. Water vapor is. It does 95% of the warming. Nothing we humans do increases the amount of water vapor in the air because more than 70% of the Earth's surface is water, most of which evaporates in sunlight. Only a few loons blame us for increased water vapor.

The following three gasses really comprise nearly all our atmosphere: Nitrogen--78.08%; Oxygen---20.95%; and, Argon--.93%. That is, 99.96% of the dry atmosphere is not a greenhouse gas.

CO2 is merely .o38% of the atmosphere, but only a small part of that small part is man made. I think it's only 5%, although there is reasoned disagreement regarding the percentage of anthropogenic CO2--so it could be higher, no higher than 30%, but it could be higher.

If I'm right and we humans make only 5% of the CO2 in the atmosphere that means anthropogenic CO2 is only .0019% of the atmosphere, or, said another way, the atmosphere is .000019 anthropogenic CO2. If you were flying from Denver to New York, .000019 of the trip would not get you off the runway. It is a very small amount. Too small to have any measurable effect.

And any increase in atmospheric CO2 after the agreed upon pre-industrial 280 parts per million of CO2 has very little effect on temperature because, at 280 ppm, 95% of the energy the CO2 could theoretically capture is being captured. Doubling the ppm to 560 would only conceivably raise the temperature between one to two degrees centigrade. We are not going to double CO2 by 2100. No responsible scientists doubts the diminishing effectiveness of CO2 or predicts more than 520 ppm CO2 by the end of the century. Right now we're at 385 ppm, a 37.5% rise in the past 130 years. The doubling of the current number, to 770 ppm, won't occur until nearly 2300.

Like a drunk looking for his keys, Krugman stumbles onto the sine qua non to the Warmie theory when he talks about something being self-reinforcing. Because of the limits on what CO2 can capture now, the essential theory of the Warmie alarmists is that the little bit of warming from increased CO2 causes a positive feedback which "self-reinforces" the warming and makes it much warmer, thus spiralling up to extremely hot weather. There is plenty of empirical evidence out there that no such positive feedback exists. There is NO empirical evidence that the little bit of heating from increased CO2, if it exists and if it is even measurable, is causing a positive feedback system.

Finally, the past 450,000 years, through about four ice ages and interglacials, has shown that increased CO2 does nothing, to nothing much, to the temperature. The Vostok ice cores show that temperature goes up or down first and then CO2 follows after either a 1200 or 800 year average delay.

The only things the Warmies can show us to support their theory are necessarily flawed (too simplistic) computer simulations, which are not evidence, not even close.

I'm told Krugman did some great work about foreign trade many years ago, but his knowledge of that subject does not mean that he knows anything about climatology. He doesn't.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Thought of the Day

Someday, all these technologies will come together. The Buck Rogers vision of the future is an electricity “ecosystem” built on a smart grid through which bountiful forms of clean, domestic power course into stylish electric vehicles and abstemious buildings outfitted with smart appliances that can run the dishwasher or dry the laundry at whatever time of day power is cheapest (in the future, rates will float to reflect demand), thereby lowering your already scandalously low and guilt-free energy bill even farther. Blackouts and price spikes, like Dick Cheney and Enron, will be relics of a distant age, and Jimmy Carter will be fondly recalled as a man ahead of his time.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Disgrace

I won't get to the merits of HB 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, except to say that it is a form of economic suicide for a "problem" with CO2 that does not exist (reminds me of the Aztecs sacrificing humans to ensure good corn harvests), but no member of the House, or Senate, who votes for a bill which he or she has not read is worthy of re-election. There are no exceptions to this rule.

There was no need to hurry with this bill, yet the House leadership posted the so-called final version of a 1,200 page bill less than 20 hours before the vote and then issued 300 pages of substantial amendment to the 1,200 page bill around 3:00 a.m. Before any human could possibly have read the original and understood it and the amendments, and after allowing only five hours of debate, the Democrats managed to pass, narrowly, the cap and trade/energy tax plan.

Disgraceful.

Particularly on top of the unread by anyone so-called stimulus bill spending bill in February.

I haven't cross referenced the Democrats who voted against the cap and trade/energy tax and also voted against the stimulus bill, but it appears that all but 8 of the Republicans in the House have actually done their job and only 44, at most, of the Democrats have done theirs.

This is not actually a question of partisanship. The central thing a Senator or Representative has to do is know what he or she is voting for. No pigs in a poke. If you haven't read the bill, you can't vote for it.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Thought of the Day

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Pop Giants Pass

Farrah Fawcett is dead from cancer at 62. We know now why her red swimsuit poster was in every boys' room in the 70s. See more of her in Saturn 3 and ExTermites.

Michael Jackson is dead from a heart attack at 50. I really liked Off the Wall, some of Bad and most of Thriller, but he hit a creative wall with that massive album and then got weirder and weirder and weirder forever.

Reality Check for Our President's Aspirations

Whether we'll get a disasterous cap and trade energy tax by the end of next year: Closed at 50--Buy 59.9; Sell 45.

Whether we'll get government health care by the end of this year: Closed at 38--Buy 38.5; Sell 35.

The President's approval ratings will be 60 or above by the end of this month: Closed at 35--Buy at 44; Sell at 35.

Unemployment in US will be 10% or above in December, 2009: Closed at 78.8--Buy at 88; Sell at 82.

Democrats hold on to the New Jersey governorship: Closed at 41--Buy at 46; Sell at 40.

Not what the hope and change crowd was hoping (and changing) for.

These may not be take them to the bank predictions like my Oscar picks, but people are spending their own money there in order to make money, they hope, and the predictions are generally very reliable.

Photos Not in Need of a Caption

Facts are Stubborn Things

One of the worst, but most convincing, things in the Warmie propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth was Al Gore's use of the Vostok ice cores. He showed the temperature variations recreated by the ice cores and just below it the CO2 variations AND THEY SEEMED TO LINE UP REMARKABLY WELL Gore's graph looked a lot like the one to the left. Ergo, it was easy to believe that in the past 400,000 years, CO2 variation caused the recorded temperature variation.

What Vice President Gore did not do is put the two graphs together in one graph, as has been done below. Now it is easy to see that Gore had it backward. Over the past 400,000 years, temperature has gone up and down and then CO2 has followed. Thus, to even the merest tyro in climatological studies, it is clear that temperature variation causes CO2 variation and not the reverse.

Here is a Mr. Wizard type science experiment you can perform. Take a can of coke, which contains carbolic acid (CO2 dissolved in water) and freeze it. Open the can and see how much CO2 comes out. Take another can and heat it to 99 degrees C. Open it (carefully) and see how much CO2 comes gushing out. Clearly global temperature effects the equilibrium of CO2 in the air with the CO2 dissolved in the ocean. The warmer it is, the more CO2 in the ocean out-gasses to the atmosphere.

Thus, when temperature rises, because of the sun's variability, more CO2 comes out of the ocean to exist in the air. That's the record we see in the Vostok ice core results. It is absolutely not a support of Warmie theory, indeed it is one of the several refutations of that scam.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The Real Racial History of Democrats

One of Rush Limbaugh's guest hosts (oxymoron) Roger Hedgecock, has a good article on the real history of the Democrats' treatment first of African slaves and then the freed African-Americans, now their most enthusiastic and loyal supporters. I have one quibble. Here is what the other Roger wrote:

Southern Democrats spent the next 100 years trying to keep freed slaves down with segregation laws, poll taxes to deny the right to vote, and lynching to enforce the social order. The KKK was formed by a Democrat; no Republican has ever been a member of the KKK. This is the heritage of the Democratic Party.

Not true, there were a handful of Republican KKK members, but 99.9% of the KKK were Democrats. Try to be more careful, Roger.

Here are some more little known historical facts:

The war was started by Democrat secessionists, and just as President Lincoln was on the verge of victory, the Northern Democrats wanted to save the South and slavery with "peace talks"!

[...]

As recently as 1964, when the Senate debated the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats (including Al Gore's father) voted no. While Northern Democrats voted yes, their votes were not enough. The deciding votes to pass this landmark bill were provided by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and the Republicans.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who was well aware of the history Mr Hedgecock describes, was a Republican.

At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.

It is a target rich statement. First, no tax is paid by any corporations; they merely collect it for the government by passing it along to the consumers of the products of the corporations. President Obama is not unaware of this. Indeed here is what he said in January, 2008, about the cap and trade scheme/energy tax:

Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.

I know the press is still covering for him, but is he unaware that we have electronic records of what he has said in the past? Does he care that he's lying so transparently?

Second, "dangerous carbon emissions"? CO2? Necessary for life CO2? Coming out of every human at each and every breath CO2? It's dangerous?

Third, "contaminate the water we drink"? CO2? Contaminating the water we drink? Well, other than the carbolic acid in our soda cans and seltzer water, what the heck is he talking about?

Good Looking Women Soldiers

These pretty young Indian soldiers are training with Sten Mark IIIs(Clearly they're Stens, I'm guessing about the version) which were inadequate and nearly obsolete when they were first used early in WWII. So perhaps the Indian Army is not the best equipped in the world. They can still easily take on the Pakistani Army in case hostilities break out for a fourth time, since 1948, but we are rooting now for the Pakistani Army who are taking on, and taking out, we hope, the Taliban and al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Another pretty Swede. I can't decipher her rank badge, but I doubt she's a general (too young, not too female). If I had to criticize her face, I would say that she has plucked her eyebrows a few too many times, but it is a very minor blemish, if it is a blemish at all.

Vacation Photos

Went for a week to the steeped-in-virtually-unknown-history Amelia Island at the north east corner of Florida. It was a thriving slaving port after the 1809 federal suspension of the importation of foreign slaves, as it was Spanish territory and it was easy to smuggle in slaves from there. Also, previously, on just-to-the-north Cumberland Island, Georgia, the much sought after widow of Revolutionary War General Nathanial Green (Chris Cooper's character in Mel Gibson's The Patriot) helped Eli Whitney perfect the already existing cotton gin, which 'invention' increased the need for slaves at least twofold, thus making the smuggling all the more necessary. Lots of history there. Here are the shots:

Above the dune protecting walkway to the beach where, when conditions were right, it was lots of fun to body surf in the rather tame Atlantic swell.

To the left is one of our younger condo-mates. She beat me in chess, twice.

A boomer, a trident nuclear submarine, with its two contract escorts, waiting a change in either the blue or gold crew. (Perhaps both as three tugs came out in a hurry and then just as quickly went back in.)

A merchantman coming in for the pulp or paper products which are the island's main industries (besides tourism).

A totally useless brick fort circa the Civil War, named Fort Clinch. Robert E. Lee properly declared it indefensible during the war and suggested evacuation if the blue bellies ever came.

A fairly successful half day's catch. These are King Mackerel (aka Kingfish) which do not taste at all like mackerel in the Sushi Shop. I caught only inedible fish--horn bellies for bait, a Bonita and a spotted shark.

Another view of the Clinch. The northerners did invade and the townspeople left the island. The Yankees were so bored with their absolutely uneventful occupation they even improved on the useless fort with bricks imported from New York.

Wild horses on the former millionaires playground of Cumberland Island, now mainly park. The ill-fated John Kennedy Jr. married here to his shrew of a wife. I'm sure the maximum of inconvenience for pulling off such a wedding in a virtual middle of nowhere was a sign for the future that grown up John John missed to his detriment.

Thought of the Day

So in his recent speech in Cairo [President Obama] applied the same technique. Among his many unique qualities, the 44th president is the first to give the impression that the job is beneath him — that he is too big and too gifted to be confined to the humdrum interests of one nation state. As my former National Review colleague David Frum put it, the Obama address offered “the amazing spectacle of an American president taking an equidistant position between the country he leads and its detractors and enemies.”

What would you make of that “equidistance” if you were back in the palace watching it on CNN International? Maybe you’d know that, on domestic policy, Obama uses the veneer of disinterested arbiter as a feint. Or maybe you’d just figure that no serious world leader can ever be neutral on vital issues. So you’d start combing the speech for what lies underneath the usual Obama straw men — and women: “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.” Very brave of you, I’m sure. But what about the Muslim women who choose not to cover themselves and wind up as the victims of honor killings in Germany and Scandinavia and Toronto and Dallas? Ah, but that would have required real courage, not audience flattery masquerading as such.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Thought of the Day

Moreover, this incipient revolution [in Iran] is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Thought of the Day

...Obama has tried to play Lincoln, Reagan, JFK and FDR-- but in the end he can only play himself, a shallow, manipulative and egotistical amateur who is in over his head, and trying to drag the country down with him. Obama’s White House is falling down and while the flashbulbs are still glittering and the parties are going on in D.C. and around the world, Obama and the Democratic Congress may be headed for a recession of their own.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Second Thought of the Day

In the Cairo speech, nearly every historical allusion was nonfactual or inexact: the fraudulent claims that Muslims were responsible for European, Chinese, and Hindu discoveries; the notion that a Christian Córdoba was an example of Islamic tolerance during the Inquisition; the politically correct canard that the Renaissance and Enlightenment were fueled by Arab learning; the idea that abolition and civil rights in the United States were accomplished without violence — as if 600,000 did not die in the Civil War, or entire swaths of Detroit, Gary, Newark, and Los Angeles did not go up in flames in the 1960s.

Thought of the Day

Never mind that von Brunn isn't a member of the far right. Nor is he a member of the far left, as some on the right are claiming. He's not a member of anything other than the crazy caucus. Von Brunn's True North is conspiratorial anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. He's not a member of the Christian Right. In fact, he denounces Christianity -- just as Hitler did -- as a Jewish plot against paganism and Western vigor. Nor is he a capitalist. Again, just as Hitler did, he hails socialism as the solution to the West's problems,

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Speak softly and carry a big gun. Like the Barrett Model 82A1 in .50 BMG. This is a Canadian soldier of which there are less than 25,000 who appears to be happy in her work. I would be too if I got to use the M 82, although it is a bit punishing on the shoulder and the ears.

The drape of her trousers makes it look like she's wearing jodhpurs, which I don't believe she is. Canadian camo is remarkably similar to ours. What are the odds?

Thought of the Day

Aside from the general level of disgust that Americans have for congressmen, there's the question of whether there is anything that Congress does well. What about Social Security and Medicare? Congress has allowed Social Security and Medicare to accumulate an unfunded liability of $101 trillion. That means in order to pay promised elderly entitlement benefits, Congress would have to put trillions in the bank today earning interest. Congressional efforts to create "affordable housing" have created today's financial calamity. Congress props up failed enterprises such as Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service with huge cash subsidies, and subsidies in the forms of special tax treatment and monopoly rights. I can't think of anything that Congress does well yet we Americans call for them to take greater control over important areas of our lives.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Good Looking Women Soldiers

This cute Swedish soldier in camo face paint--I don't think she was really trying to obscure her face. Swedish camo is strange while the rest of the Nordic countries have pretty neat camo uniforms, especially Denmark.

Thought of the Day

The most hilarious thing about the Democrats’ attempt to engulf the health care industry in the inky blackness of the federal government is their primary selling point: that a government takeover will actually lead to reduced costs. How's that plan working out with Medicare so far? Oh yeah, it's on track to bankrupt the entire country. So let's expand that -- what could go wrong? Well, besides all the features that usually come along with socialized medicine: reduced quality of care, long wait times for operations, and allowing old people to die in order to cut costs. Obamacare would lead to health care with the compassion of the IRS, the competence of FEMA, and the well staffed work force of our border patrol at a much higher cost, but on the upside, you won't live as long, so you'll have less time to complain about it.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Friday Movie Review (quite late): Terminator 4

OK the question I had, before I saw Terminator: Salvation a few weeks ago, was whether it was like the clever but underfunded first one, the seriously good second one or the completely sucky third one. Unfortunately it is very like the third.

Both Christian Bale and Moon Bloodgood are as bland as whitebread with mayo. All of Bale's passion was apparently bled away, directed at a poor grip or someone who pissed him off. The only good actor in it was Aussie Sam Worthington, who had a brooding presence that went far beyond the stupid things he had to say. He was clearly the best thing in the movie and that's a blessing as he is the lead in the eagerly anticipated James Cameron serious science fiction work Avatar due mid December. Could be good.

Most of this was filmed in New Mexico (I recognized the bridge over the upper Rio Grande--oh, and they said it was filmed there) which was a little depressing but that's what they wanted. There were totally pointless puffs of fire in the machine's main lair. That, burning the waste gas and pipes are the new Dracula's castle in these things. There was also a one and a half size CGI Governor Schwarzenegger in one of his most iconic of rolls.

I have some questions? Is there anyone out there who thinks we can sneak up on a semi-sentient machine? You don't think they could hear our breathing, heartbeat or footfalls? Why oh why, when the big machine gets hold of Bale, doesn't it pull his head off rather than throw him across the room so he has time to recover? I don't think a semi-sentient machine would release a human it wanted to kill until he or she was killed. This is the worst sort of plot contrivance.

I think I have pinpointed the problem. The director was at one time named Joseph McGinty Nichol but insists now on being called McG. What a wanker. He has a BA in psychology from UC Irvine and triumphed before this with the unwatchable two Charlie's Angels movies and the schmaltzy We Are Marshall. According to IMDB enough people were foolish enough to see this for money that yet another Terminator movie is slated for his future. Happy Happy Joy Joy!

I could say more but none of it is good, so why bother. Very bad movie.

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Here, perhaps, is an inferior way to camoflage a face. I'm led to believe that the areas which get a lot of light, the forehead, nose, cheeks and top of the chin are to get dark colors and the areas which are usually in shadow are to get light colors. Close. Although the face is charming, it's the wrong face .

Thought of the Day

Obama seems not to have learned from previous presidents' attempts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that no solution is possible without an interlocutor willing to let Israel live in peace. His attempt to muscle Israel into stopping even natural growth of settlements beyond the 1967 line applies pressure to the party already willing to make peace. Obama needs to brush up on the Barbary pirates, but even more so on the last 40 years of Middle East history.

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Thought of the Day

Would Obama be comfortable mandating "no natural growth" to Israel's million-and-a-half Muslims? No. But the administration has embraced "the Muslim world's" commitment to one-way multiculturalism, whereby Islam expands in the West but Christianity and Judaism shrivel remorselessly in the Middle East.

Friday, June 05, 2009

It's Not So Much What He Says...

President Obama today at Buchenwald:

This place teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others' suffering is not our problem, and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests.

Tough for him to explain then his opposition, even now, to our liberation of the Iraqi people from the Hitler like tyrant Saddam Hussein. Perhaps he is unable to make such connections in his mind. Many pathological narcissists can't.

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Here's the one woman I've seen who I think could kick my butt. It's not that I didn't think many women are strong enough or skillful enough to beat me up; of course they are, but I doubted they had the grit as well as the strength and skill to clean my clock. I have always thought, in my chauvinist ways, that they could dish it out but not take it--if I got a lick in, they would fold. For some reason I can't articulate, this one seems to have the grit; perhaps it's the girth of her guns. Go Devil Dogs.

Second Thought of the Day

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers

June 2, 2009, 9:42PM

What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.

So when the right wing f***tards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

Thought of the Day

In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders -- Fatah and Hamas alike -- built no schools, no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Transparent Untruths--Part 2

Further quotes from the President's speech today in Cairo:

For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding.

Yeah, the perfect metaphor for the Palestinians--American slaves. Mother of God. Violence didn't end the practice of slavery in the United States? Well if you ignore the .6 Million dead in our Civil War, I guess you can say it was peaceful insistence upon our ideals which ended the practice. But you would have to be an idiot to believe it.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel’s security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must takeconcrete steps to enable such progress.

Israel lets Muslims live in Israel as full citizens. The areas where Palestinians live must be Judenrein. So of course there is an equivalence in our President's eyes between the actions of the Muslims and the reactions of the Jews. The only people standing in the way of Palestinian development are the Palestinians, and it is heartbreaking because we know how talented and hard working they are from the success they have had once they have left the West Bank, Gaza and the wretched UN refugee camps which have existed for 6 decades. The only real thing preventing the two state solution is that the Palestinians don't want two states--they want one state with no Jews in it. That's not a two sided problem for anyone with even the slightest knowledge of history since the end of WWII.

No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.

Is our President such a beginner that he can't see the internal contradiction of those two sentences? No nation can say who can have nukes. I say no nation should have nukes. Pitiful. Saddening. It is unicorn and pixie idealism which makes Obama look like a fool.

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.

Oh yeah, they tolerate the dhimmi.

I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.

Who thinks a woman in a hijab is less equal? Obama the mighty slayer of hollow straw men? But at last, the blind hog found acorn--we agree on something. As long as the Muslims treat their women as they do, they will be a "a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel," to quote Lawrence in the movie.

Transparent Untruths

From the President's speech earlier this morning in Cairo:

Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.

Under what criteria was it a war of choice? Only if you consider the August, 1990, bloody invasion and occupation of Kuwait a nullity, no harm, no foul, was our invasion of Iraq in 2003 a choice. You could just as easily consider our war against National Socialist Germany a war of choice. Germany had not attacked us; Imperial Japan had. We had partially ended the Gulf War, as we call our kicking Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, not with a peace treaty but with a cease fire with conditions--quite a number of things that Saddam Hussein had to agree to do to keep our forces out of Iraq. He did not keep his promises on more than one or two of the several cease fire requirements. We dithered a while, mainly under Democratic leadership, while attempting to force changes in Iraq though the diplomacy of the UN, et al. All our efforts were a complete failure, and only if we considered the cease fire requirements worth nothing was it a 'choice' to finish properly the war crime that was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Our actions in Spring, 2003, resulted from and indeed proved the limits of diplomacy and an international consensus. And as our President grudgingly admits, we improved the lives of most Iraqis. That we also dealt al Qaeda a near mortal blow went unmentioned, as the speech contained no praise of America or our Armed Forces.

But there's worse. Behold:

9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals.

Let me translate: My predecessor was a war criminal.

Complete bullshit and utterly contemptible. Only if you do not consider taking swift and effective steps to protect our nation from further attack a laudable ideal, did our successful efforts to defend the nation by taking off the kid gloves, and moving the venue of the war to those nations who supported and protected those who waged it on us, not conform with the principles we have consistently held.

But there's even worse. See:

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

The Christians in the former Palestinian Mandate have suffered at the hands of Israel? Transparently untrue. If there has been any suffering of Christians in the area it was nearly exclusively caused by the Muslims over the past 60 plus years. The pain of dislocation of the Muslims who lived in the Palestinian Mandate is purely a self inflicted wound. Most willingly left their homes in 1947 and 1948, secure that they would soon return after the 5 Arab Armies made the area as Judenrein as the Nazis had made Hungary just 3 years prior. The reason there is an 'occupation' is because the Muslims keep attacking the Israelis. Following the first attacks, the West Bank, as it is called, was occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan and the former Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt. Had the Palestinians, as they call themselves, recognized Israel and not sought to effect a second Holocaust, the would probably be bitching and moaning about those occupations, which were brutal. Israel was however subsequently attacked by Jordan and Egypt, et al., beat them, and took over the territory those nations had taken over. How in the world is that Israel's fault? The Israelis recently left Gaza voluntarily. Only because the Gazans routinely shell and send rockets into Israel is the border closed. Again, how is that Israel's fault? What's intolerable about the Palestinian situation is that they refuse to allow the area to have Jews in it. This is in stark contrast to the situation of Muslims citizens in Israel, who have full civil rights, Jimmy Carter's apartheid smear notwithstanding.

Obama's speech was not so much naive as full of misinformation. To quote the Gipper: "It isn't that Liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so much that isn't so."

Thought of the Day

"A double blast from al Qaeda against Barack Obama shows the group is as worried as ever by the persuasive skills of the U.S. president, who makes a speech to Muslims on Thursday," Reuters "reports" from London:

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio recording aired on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television, said Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" towards the United States in the Muslim world and he warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.

A day earlier, the militant network's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egyptians not to be seduced by Obama's 'polished words' when he makes a major address in Cairo seeking to repair ties with the Muslim world.

When we read this, we suspected bias. After all, al Qaeda often attacked George W. Bush, but did Reuters portray this as a sign of the American president's strength and bin Laden's fear of his "persuasive skills"?

Then again, would it really be worth our time to comb through the archives in order to prove something so obvious--to answer what is essentially a rhetorical question?

Fortunately, we didn't have to! Reuters confirmed our suspicion in the next paragraph of this very dispatch:

For some, al Qaeda's concerted attempt to upstage Obama is a propaganda own goal that shows its normally media-savvy operatives in disarray following the departure of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush. They found Bush easy to stereotype as a belligerent, Muslim-hating cowboy.

This is a good opportunity to remind readers of one of Taranto's Laws of Journalism: When it appears in a news story, the word some is a first-person pronoun.

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Here's one from somewhere in the former Eastern bloc, almost certainly Russia, apparently happy with her shooting skill. Her assault weapon appears to be an AK 74M with black polymer stock and hand covers. Very nice. That would be a good weapon to use in a well regulated militia, so, of course, it's illegal for U.S. ordinary citizens to own one. We continue to call these weapons AK 47s even though those are obsolete and ever rarer, replaced with just this sort of improved version.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Our Christian President Thinks We Are a Big Muslim Nation

Most of the media in America is totally and transparently in the tank for President Obama, but it's less so in the rest of the world, like in Canada and Britain. Behold this bit of snark here. Money quote:

It is important to note that "if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world".

So says President Barack Obama. Or I should say: Barack Hussein Obama.

That's right: Barack Hussein Obama. Say it proud. Say it out loud. The middle moniker that dared not speak its name during the election campaign is now front and centre of the US president's attempt to woo the Muslim world, the theme of his visits to Riyadh on Wednesday and Cairo on Thursday.

Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim, Candidate Obama - a practicing Christian - never used the name "Hussein" and its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.

No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short - now appears to be the height of political correctness.

[...]

So that's once, twice, three times a Muslim?

And I got to that article through Kate at Small Dead Animals who says: Welcome to the Just-Makes-Shit-Up Presidency. I thought the same thing but I'm not as clever.

Second Thought of the Day

The spectacle of Treasury being run by a tax cheat, health care being administered by a lawyer with no medical training, and the fifty-billion-dollar GM boondoggle being captained by someone who appears to have been chosen randomly from a list of campaign operatives, is darkly amusing - but not at all surprising. This is the kind of garbage that happens every time politicians are given too much power.

Doctor Zero, if that really is his name, in a very gloomy article of prediction

Report on the American War Dead in Afghanistan and Iraq

According to Department of Defense releases for the month of May: Things are still warm in Iraq, with 25 war dead, of which 12 were combat related (that last is down slightly from what occurred last month). In Afghanistan, things appeared to be warming up at last, as there were nearly twice the battle deaths this month as in April.

Here is further breakdown. In Iraq, nine were killed by IEDs (just one more than last month), one died in combat operations, ten died from non combat causes (including 5 victims of mass murder), two died from small arms fire, and three died in accidents.

In Afghanistan, four died from IEDs, just one from non-combat causes, two died from small arms and three from direct fire, and one was killed in an accident. It's near the end of Spring there but there appears to be, again, no overwhelming, sweep out the infidel troops, dreaded Taliban Spring Offensive. Perhaps they have their hands full in Pakistan, where I am led to believe they are being defeated. The Pakistani Army appears to be somewhat effective after all. The total in Afghanistan was 11, nearly twice the number from last month. The total during May for the wars being waged against us is 36, slightly more than one per day, without the mass murder it would be precisely one per day.

It was a deadly month for officers including one officer woman who had graduated from the Air Force Academy down the road from here in Colorado Springs. These dead were: Major Matthew Houseal, 54, of Amarillo, Texas, who was one of the mass murder victims of Sgt. John Russell in Iraq; Commander Charles Springle, 52, of Wilmington, North Carolina, another Russel victim; Major Steven Hutchison, 60, of Scottsdale, Arizona, killed by an IED in Iraq; Major Jason George, 38 of Tehachepi, California, killed by an IED in Iraq; Lt. Colonel Mark Stratton, 39, of Houston, Texas, killed by an IED in Afghanistan; Commander Duane Wolfe, 54, Port Hueneve, California, killed by an IED in Iraq; 1st Lieutenant Leevi Barnard, 28, Mount Airy, North Carolina, killed by an IED in Iraq; and, 1st Lieutenant Roslyn Schulte, 25, of St. Louis, Missouri, killed by an IED in Afghanistan.

Our thoughts and prayers go to the families and loved ones of these fallen warriors, and all our hopes for their continued success goes to our men and women, mainly men, fighting overseas.

Thought of the Day

Most European countries have seen the damage that green energy can do to their economies and are rapidly (if quietly) scaling back their support. This is especially true in the countries that have been leaders on solar and wind power.

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Thought of the Day

Clearly, Judge Randolph, author of the decision denying release in the U.S. that the Uighurs are trying to appeal, has gotten a lot smarter since January 20. He’s evidently convinced Holder, previously an ardent critic of Bush’s policy of indefinitely detaining actual enemy combatants, that indefinitely detaining even purportedly innocent, non-combatant aliens is fully consistent with Supreme Court precedent. In fact, to support that contention, Obama’s DOJ now expressly relies on an episode the Left hasn’t wanted to talk about much over the last eight years: “the thousands of Haitian migrants involuntarily interdicted by the U.S. Coast Guard in the 1990s and held at Guantanamo Bay pending their resettlement or repatriation.” If you’re keeping score, that was the indefinite-detention policy of the Clinton administration, which Holder served as deputy attorney general.

The Great Nebula in Carina

300 light years across and 7,500 light years away, NGC 3372, the Great Nebula in Carina, is a magnificent object in this composite photo from the Hubble telescope. At one time this nebula held one of the brightest stars in the night sky, Eta Carina, which, beginning in 1840 faded dramatically.

Monday, June 01, 2009

Bloody Kansas

Having flirted with the idea of armed insurrection as a last resort, and been shot down by it, so that I, in turn, as is my wont, rejected it too, I was very chagrined to learn that someone has taken up the idea in more than an academic context and killed an abortionist, in church. So much for the Highlander rule about sacred ground. The suspect in the George Tiller murder is named Scott Roeder, and he has a long history supporting less than polite sloganeering in opposition to abortion. I have been all over the map about abortion. I have lighted at last in the Catholic/true feminist position. The foetus is human life without legal rights and it is wrong to kill him or her, but making abortion illegal will have the unintended consequence of killing more women desperate enough to have illegal abortions; so I would, if I were a governor or something, do everything to make it easier to set up Juno like adoptions and would only outlaw killing the foetus when it is clearly viable outside the womb, except in the exceedingly rare occasions when it is either the baby or the mother (the mother wins) and the baby has to be killed rather than just be born. But enough about me.

Dr. Tiller was infamous for doing the very late term abortions, what are called partial birth abortion, although he escaped prosecution for them. I am more interested in whether the judge in the murder prosecution likely to follow will allow the accused to present the defense of 'defense of others'. And I am reminded of the blood shed by abolitionists in Kansas before the Civil War. Of course the violence there didn't solve the problem, but in retrospect, it seemed to portend the hyper-violence to follow.

It is of course axiomatic that any supporter of a group which calls itself pro-life and supports the non-existent right of the unborn to live should not be killing anyone. The left appears to be beating the right over the head with an un-representative act and the right appears to be condemning the act with some heartfelt fervor.

I wonder if repeated vigilante action against very late term abortionists wouldn't end the process right then and there. I hope we don't learn about what effect that would have, because that would mean more murders. Bad stuff all around.

Good Looking Women Soldiers

Even though James Cameron missed it by a mile when he called the future soldiers in Aliens, Space Marines (don't get me started), he was a bit more on the mark with the type of woman who would have been attracted to such military service. Recall the body type of Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) and Dietrich (Cynthia Scott), for example. They were not at all like this soldier.